In a move that's sure to delight the literally millions of Wii owners out there, Nintendo has announced that it will be offering a development platform which will allow almost anyone to create games that can be downloaded from the Wii Shop Channel. Like Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express before it, the so called WiiWare service gives at-home developers the tools to create content playable with those magical controllers, meaning that many of the strange and disturbing concept titles we've seen may actually come to fruition starting next year. Since no one wants to sit around coding for free (except for, you know, the entire open source community), Nintendo will allow devs to sell their wares to the public -- "reducing barriers to entry," as the economists say, while giving gamers a potentially endless source of cheap and innovative content. Just remember, Nintendo, when you gift the masses with the power to create, you're definitely not gonna like all of their creations.

[Via Joystiq]

Microsoft's been talking this one up for some time now, but XNA Game Studio Express, the so-called "YouTube for games," has finally hit the big 1.0 and is now available for would-be game designers everywhere to get their hands dirty with. The software is a trimmed down version of the company's full-fledged XNA game devleopment platform, based on Visual C# Express and able to run on a standard Windows PC (XP for now, Vista later). The YouTube analogy is, of course, a bit of an overstatement as you'll need some honest-to-goodness programming skills to actually create something resembling a game. While the core software is available as a free download, to get the most out of it you'll have to sign up for the XNA Creators Club, which will run you $49 for a four month subscription or $99 for an annual sub through Xbox Live Marketplace. In addition to letting you play user-created games on an Xbox 360, it'll also give you access to a library of game assests, as well as sample products, white papers, and technical support. If you need an added incentive, Microsoft's also announced the "Dream-Build-Play" game design competition, though the only details they're providing at the moment are that you can win "fantastic prizes" and "global envy." Funny, we thought you needed a PS3 for that.

User-created games are nothing new, but now that they've got a nice Web 2.0 buzzword to glom onto, maybe they can amount to something. Microsoft is developing a new app to allow hobbyists to build their very own playable titles for Xbox Live. The program, called XNA Game Studio Express, will cost $99 a year, and will be available for Windows XP and Vista. Apparently the toolset is a heavily trimmed down version of the one available to actual developers, and will still require at least basic programming skills, but users will own their work. Peter Moore calls it "our first step of creating a YouTube for videogames." He also added "I'd love to send a royalty cheque to a kid," but we'll believe that when we see it. It doesn't sound like anything incredibly complicated will be possible with the system, but if YouTube video bloggers are any indication, you don't need snazzy effects -- or necessarily talent -- to make it big on the Internet.